The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has given approval for setting up a National Technical Textiles Mission with a total outlay of Rs 1,480 crore. The implementation period of the mission is from FY21 to FY24. The Mission will have four components.
Component-I includes research, innovation and development with outlay of Rs 1,000 crore. The component will promote both fundamental research at fibre level aiming at path breaking technological products in carbon fibre, aramid fibre, nylon fibre, and composites and application based research in geo-textiles, agro-textiles, medical textiles, mobile textiles and sports textiles and development of bio degradable technical textiles.
The fundamental research activities will be based on pooled resource method and conducted in various Centre for Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) laboratories, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and other scientific/industrial/academic laboratories.
Application-based research will be conducted in CSIR, IIT, Research Design & Standards Organisation (RDSO) of Indian Railways, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), Indian Road Research Institute (IRRI) and other such laboratories.
Component -II includes promotion and market development and aims at average growth rate of 15-20 percent per annum taking the level of domestic market size to USD 40-50 billion by the year 2024, through market development, market promotion, international technical collaborations, investment promotions and Make in India initiatives.
Component-III aims at export promotion of technical textiles enhancing from the current annual value of approximately Rs 14,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore by 2021-22 and ensuring 10 percent average growth in exports per year up to 2023-24.
Component-IV aims at education, training, skill development, among others. The mission will promote technical education at higher engineering and technology levels related to technical textiles and its application areas covering engineering, medical, agriculture, aquaculture and dairy segments. Skill development will be promoted and adequate pool of highly skilled manpower resources will be created for meeting the need of relatively sophisticated technical textiles manufacturing units.
The mission will focus on usage of technical textiles in various flagship missions, programmes of the country including strategic sectors. Also, the use of geo-textiles in highways, railways and ports will result in robust infrastructure, reduced maintenance cost and higher life cycle of the infrastructure assets.
The promotion of innovation amongst young engineering /technology/ science standards and graduates will be taken up by the mission; along with creation of innovation and incubation centres and promotion of start-up and ventures.
A sub-component of the research will focus on development of bio- degradable technical textiles materials, particularly for agro-textiles, geo-textiles and medical textiles.
